The Observer - 29 June
Jay Rayner was disappointed by Cafeteria, London W10
In writing this I'm probably about to destroy my good relations with John Torode, the Australian chef who is one of the partners in the venture. Torode is the man behind Smiths of Smithfield, in London's Smithfield. I like the food at Smiths, which make a virtue of organic, free-range meats, moderate pricing and straight-up dishes, with the occasional Asiatic twist. I don't like the food at Cafeteria, which is too much twist and not enough straight-up. It is also, in places, aggressively priced: £12 for six prawns with mayonnaise, for example, is more than steep. It's bloody vertiginous.
(Meal for two, including wine and service, £75)
The Sunday Times - 29 June
Giles Coren on the "sensational" food at Lola's, London N1
There was a pale, peachy little consomm‚, clear as tears but tasting of the meatiest gazpacho - which was truly shocking in a gentle and giggly way. There was "duck three ways" that will bring a tear to your eye: foie gras, rillettes, breast and sticky chorizo, all mortared with a sort of mousse and rolled in a dream, then sliced to produce a five-coloured cross-section of ducky circles, and served with a r‚moulade that does all the good mustardy things that celeriac does and then turns out to be turnip.
(£50 a head for food and wine. Rating: 8.67/10)
The Guardian - 28 June
Matthew Fort at Paul and Jeannie Rankin's Cayenne, Belfast
The Rankins' food carries the hallmark of their much travelled past. I am not always in favour of such polygenetic cooking - with so much fusion going on, I find it hard to detect a chef's true personality. However, I came to the conclusion that eclecticism is the Rankin personality. The three first courses - salt 'n' chilli squid with chilli jam and a‹oli; seared fillet of beef with Szechwan cucumber salad and chilli mayo; and hot foie gras with roast sweet-and-sour apples and grilled brioche - embraced four cultures, at a conservative estimate.
(Rating: 16.5/20)
The Sunday Telegraph - 29 June
Matthew Norman at Ettington Park hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
Avoiding the trap of describing wildly over-fussy dishes at twice the length of a Vikram Seth omnibus, the menu (£37.50 for three courses if you're not a resident) tends towards the minimalist, offering just five choices in each course. It adopts the heretical approach of using first-class local ingredients and relying on their natural flavours, rather than killing them stone-dead with drizzled green slime and lashings of truffle oil.
TimeOut - 8 June
Andrew Humphreys samples the Levant, Persian and Moroccan cuisines at Aziz, London SW6
Together the trio [Shahrock and Zehra Parvin, with chef Michel Giraud] takes the tastes and spices of the Mediterranean as a starting point but then sets off in search of high adventure. A meze selection supplements the tried and tested (falafel, hummus and baba ganoush) with little-seen items like chakchouka, a Tunisian dish of soft fried peppers served cold, and crisp fritters of sweet corn and gooey goaty/sheepy Turkish tulum cheese.
(Meal for two with drinks and service, £70)